The Krimzon Traitors
by Team Renly
Summary: Reload of old story after it glitched. New Krimzon Guard Kyra moves to the Underground after a mission-gone-wrong in the KG, but will the Underground prove to make anything better?
1. The Beginning

The water slums were the shabbiest part of town, with rickety wooden houses filled with refugees, in the oppressive Haven City. The water was filled with mines and we were only protected from the outside world by a metal gate.

My family was fairly normal; our father had been killed by the metal heads and our mother had no job while I had two siblings, an older brother, Rik and a younger brother, Jay.

We lived in one of the shacks squished up in the middle of the lagoon with around three other families in similar circumstances. Rik was our only source of income, with a job shifting fish in the port. It was nowhere near enough to keep us alive and I had become the food collector of our family.

I didn't have the heart to admit to my family that I got our food by travelling out the city gates and braving the metal heads. Most of our food was mangoes and fruit picked off the trees as well as the meat from all of the lizards that haunted the outer walls.

The people in my house got suspicious but they didn't question me because they needed the food and supplies. My boots were made of metal head and lizard hide and so was my jacket and so was most of our stuff. We wouldn't survive without any of the supplies from outside the wall and there was no way I would stop my ventures even if the baron himself came knocking at my door.

My daytimes consisted mostly of wandering the pumping station. I sometimes snuck into the hover bike races but you could only do it so many times before you got caught and I wasn't one to try my luck. As if I even had luck in Haven City.

I was just starting my usual rounds, picking up some lizards and fruit when I heard something up higher on the hill. I swung up onto a hanging tree branch before flinging myself up onto the ledge. The noise was coming from a tiny orange thing glistening on the ground. As I stepped towards it, I heard more rustling in the trees and a dozen Krimzon Guards had me surrounded.

Their commander stepped forwards as another yelled, "You're under arrest!"

As another two stepped towards me and handcuffed my hands behind my back.

They were about to pull me away when the commander said, "stop," quietly. I looked up at the man's face with disgust. He was the commander of the Krimzon Guard, the worst of the lot and even the lowest scum in their forces deserved to die. "I have a better idea. Take her with us to the…" but the rest of his words died out as he drifted out of focus and I fell unconscious to the ground.


	2. One Day and Counting

I woke up in a huge room filled with hammocks and there were lockers around the place with clothes and other things hanging out of them. I looked on the hammock I had been in to see a pile of clothes. It took me only a second to realise it was a Krimzon Guard uniform but just the clothes they wore underneath.

So this was the commander's 'other plan;' to make me just another puppet for the ruthless Krimzon Guard. The only reason I didn't turn around and walk away was the pay check underneath.

I wasn't willing to be just another hired mercenary but the money it earned would be the difference between surviving and letting my family die. I decided to humour the commander and got changed into the basic uniform (without the armour) and walked towards the door.

As soon as the door opened, the commander was standing outside with a smile on his face. "So you agreed to my little job proposition?"

"Yeah, yeah," I replied angrily as he smirked a little more. He didn't seem type to be the commander of the Krimzon Guard but I didn't seem the type to sell out my values and join them either.

He led me towards the armoury as he started talking, "I always need new blood in the Krimzon Guard and the talented kind is always the best. Your moves out there with the metal heads were pretty impressive and that's exactly what we need. I'm taking you out today to make sure we don't lose our newest recruit."

I found the compliments flattering but I made sure to avoid thinking of the captain to highly. It seemed to me like there was a sad edge to his voice as he mentioned losing the newest recruit and part of me felt rubbing it in, about how many lives that he'd wasted through his actions, or lack of them, but I didn't.

We reached the armoury and the door was marked by a control panel that required a KG pass. "We need to get one of these for you. After you're fitted out though or it doesn't register you properly," he said suddenly, "By the way, my name's Torn. Your's is?"

"Um, Kyrani," I replied nervously, "everyone calls me Kyra."

Luckily our conversation was forcefully ended by the door opening to the armoury. There were several dozen Krimzon Guards preparing for the morning's work and it made me realise that I hadn't been home all night after being knocked out. They all stared for a while and it made me realise I was one of the only females. There were a few others but they were in a side room and they didn't try introducing themselves.

Torn walked towards another side room that was filled with new equipment. He tossed over the armour and a gun that had several holes at the end for firing but some were bigger and that was confusing and I assumed that Torn would explain.

"Before we go out you need to get your tattoos and your helmet or you'll get shot down by your own side," Torn said, already walking out the door towards a room near the exit of the well lit but dingy barracks. Inside there was two ladies with a creepy looking machine with needles around it on wires.

As I sat in the chair in front of a mirror, I realised I was saying the last goodbye to my normal face.


	3. The KG 'Hero'

When I finally opened my eyes at the end of the mildly painful procedure, I realised I wasn't that unhappy with the result. It was only as I looked in the mirror that it hit me. I wouldn't ever look like just another face in the crowd again. I was permanently marked and I couldn't just hide my face forever.

"Ready to go?" Torn asked as he threw me a helmet from across the room.

"I suppose…" I replied doubtfully. The helmet kind of squished my head and the mouthpiece was majorly creepy and it felt like it was suffocating me.

"You don't have to wear it you know," Torn said, laughing. Probably at how stupid I looked. He was just wearing his uniform, although his armour was yellow, and his hair was short and spiky but he still had the ear covers on. "I did until I got promoted last month and then it just started to seem weird. People knew who I was anyway."

I didn't reply as we walked into the vehicle garage. Most of the vehicles had already been signed out but Torn's hover bike was in an area of its own with a shabby KG hover bike next to it. I sat on it as it floated about half a metre off the ground.

"So do you know how to ride?" Torn asked as he confidently jumped on his hover bike. I got on fine but I grabbed the handlebar and flew into the air, almost hitting the roof, "I guess not then," Torn answered his own question before jumping up and pushing a button to bring me back down. An amazing feat considering he seemed to be almost cacking himself laughing.

"Ok so pushing the right handlebar forward is the accelerator," Torn said, revving the engine on his bike to make a point, "pushing the pedals back with your feet is the brake," he continued, grinning like a little kid as he played with the controls, "the left handle is the gun, push it forward to shoot and the button next to the left handlebar changes the height you're at, either ground level or at the regulation hovering height. KG vehicles have a mid height for arresting criminals," he finished before noticing the helmet; "you're still wearing that thing?" he snorted before opening the door with his KG pass.

We rode out and once I got the hang of the controls it was actually fun but the Krimzon Guard hover bikes were so much worse than even just the pedestrian ones. It might have to do with them being perpetually shot at.

To start off with, we were just on patrol but I almost fell off the bike when a voice buzzed out of the speaker on the dashboard to tell us there was a member of the Underground making off with an eco barrel in the port sector where we were patrolling. We caught sight of the criminal only a few metres later and even though Torn's bike was in good shape, the driver was still better in the gridlock into the red sector.

As soon as I saw an opening, I gunned the throttle and chased after him. I only vaguely heard Torn's voice as he called after me to stop but he was stuck behind the other bikes. Not that that normally stopped a Krimzon Guard but I was starting to suspect that Torn didn't belong in the Krimzon Guard any more than I did. He seemed to care too much about people, even those in the way of the baron.

The gridlock covered both the pavement and the air, meaning I had to dodge around at the mid height for half an hour before I finally got a shot on the underground's bike.

The exhaust exploded and the bike flipped before landing in the port. I sent the bike into a dive, catching the eco barrel before quickly swooping up again to avoid smashing into the water. The criminal was less lucky, he face planted into the water and a tired looking Torn fished him out after catching up by taking a shortcut from where he was stuck, around a kilometre behind.

We dropped the eco barrel off at the palace, dumped the criminal in a holding cell and walked out into the bright daylight radiating over the city walls. Haven City seemed too morbid to house sunshine like this but it did. Torn and I had our helmets off, soaking up the sunshine as we patrolled the streets. At the bazaar we had a cheap lunch of yakow cheese and bread before 'checking up on the pumping station;' basically, we wanted to get some fresh air.

Finally, we walked back to the barracks and Torn went to his office while I went to the locker room. At this time in the afternoon, everyone was in the musty room and going into the separate female area was a relief. When I walked in, a lady in a shocking lack of armour introduced herself as Ashelin. "So you're Torn's new pet guard are you?" she asked jokingly.

"Yeah, sure seems like it."

"Well, welcome anyway, the locker on the top left is empty," Ashelin said.

"Why is everyone in that corner of the showers, in uniform?" I asked, as nonchalantly as possible.

"Someone noticed that there's a crack in the wall, they're trying to make it bigger because something keeps whirring behind it."

I took off all of the outside armour to try and cool off after a day in the sun before joining the others in the corner. They were trying to chip it open and avoid it being noticed later but I got impatient with this method very quickly. "Seriously, that'll take us all year," I groaned before kicking the crack and shattering the tiles around it.

It revealed a tiny camera, whirring to look at each female. "Errol," Ashelin growled.

"Who?" I asked

"Errol, the baron's head bodyguard but he's normally on security when he isn't racing and he's a total perv. He manipulates girls for fun then dumps them when he feels like it. Just because he's the 'best racer in Haven City.'"

Ashelin shot the camera and the lens exploded, leaving shattered glass and an eerie feel in the air. Then everyone realised they could shower freely for as long as they wanted without whoever this Errol guy was, watching.

Eventually it was time to go back to the hammocks, where the chatter didn't die down until around twelve and there were drinks and stories going around the room but I was only really happy and sleepy when the story of 'the new girl taking out a top underground racer' made its round.


	4. A Reason Not to Go to KG Parties

After the first day in the Krimzon Guard, the jobs we had to do were routine, patrolling the streets and occasionally dealing with attacks from the metal heads and the rebels. At first I thought that the job would be terrible, killing people or beating them senseless over pointless taxes that they couldn't afford to pay but it turned out all right. It helped that I was almost always patrolling with Torn. Ashelin came with us a lot as well and I couldn't help but feel jealous of her because of how... close she and Torn were. The job just seemed routine; patrolling around the city, setting up assaults on the metal heads in Haven Forest and the pumping station and most recently, the rebels known as the Underground.

Torn had eventually convinced me to stop wearing the helmet altogether and I'd dyed my hair green like the tattoos. He had pulled some scam to get me promoted to his advisor so I had the yellow uniform on, but I kept the red sash and used it as a scarf. A while ago, Ashelin had done my hair like hers and Torn's, which he'd grown longer, in strands, but I kept the side fringe at the front.

After work we would go to the Hip Hog and get drinks but Torn seemed unnaturally interested in Tess for a reason I couldn't describe, but he definitely didn't have a crush on her.

One time after work I went to the Hip Hog alone because Ashelin and Torn were together, knocking down all the roads into the water slums except for one in from Haven and one from the pumping station to prevent metal heads swarming the city and it just so happened we had to pay off our tab that day. I heard Tess talking to someone out the back of the pub. A quick look revealed her talking to an old man with a... tree stump on his head.

"You can't keep risking yourself talking to him. He might be powerful but we can't win if we have anyone on our side that we don't trust," the old man said.

"But maybe if I left him a hint he might help us," Tess replied, still trying to convince tree head of her opinion.

"No, Tess, that's all I'm saying on the matter," tree head replied as he walked off into the night.

My head was spinning and I wasn't quite sure why. Once I was in the pub it occurred to me that they were talking about Torn; but why? They seemed to want him to join them and I thought that they might mean the Underground, but Torn trusted her so I just avoided the thought for several weeks until something brought it up again.

I was walking back to the barracks and my own bed in a separate room; away from the hammocks, another benefit of my promotion, when I saw tree head talking to several people armed and dressed in dark clothes. I realised that I had taken a wrong turn when I got into the slums but after my theory about tree head and the underground, I was curious about why an old man would be in a dodgy alleyway with guys in dark clothes.

"Good luck, men and remember each tanker you destroy deals a body blow to the baron," tree head finished as the men prepared to leave.

"Thank you, Shadow and good luck to you as well," one of the men said and I guessed that he was the suck up of the group.

"Nonsense, go on, shoo," the old man said as he turned tail and shoved his head in front of a tiny eyehole as the door opened and he entered the building.

Wow.

I just found the location of the hideout of the Underground and the name and face of their leader as well as their next target.

While walking home from the pub.

If that doesn't get me some type of medal, I want to know what will.

I immediately sent the message across the communicator and fifteen minutes later, a squad of Krimzon Guards were at the port in front of the future dock of two eco tankers for the Baron. Torn was shouting orders but when I walked over to him, he yawned, "Kyra, you know I've wanted to get the underground down for ages but couldn't you do it on a day when I hadn't chucked an all nighter and a night when we haven't just finished the Krimzon Guard drinking competition after extra work..."

I looked around at the guards assembled and realised something, "Torn, why are they all female?"

"They're the least drunk, they only went for the vodka shots, the men were slugging pints like there was no tomorrow."

"Remind me NEVER to go to Krimzon Guard parties."

"Well we better get up on the bikes and get the floodlights down on the tanker," Torn replied but I knew that this was an order.

"Why are we turning the floodlights _down_?" I asked.

"It makes them more likely to go in for the attack so that we can trap them. The helmets have thermal and night vision settings so we'll have the upper hand," Torn explained.

As everyone got onto the hover bikes in position, I realised that four of the guards were taking longer than the rest. They jumped up and down and gunned the throttle and I realised that they acted like they had never been on bikes before. Finally, they seemed to mutter to each other but we couldn't hear it over the intercom even though the mikes picked up all conversation, even a whisper, from the wearer.

Before anyone acted, I shot the four of the bikes and zapped the riders. I jumped of the bike and rolled as two of the real guards shot at the bike. I pulled one of the fake guards up like a meat shield and pulled off the helmet. It revealed a sandy haired man with no tattoos looking vaguely out of it as his head lolled.

"See, Torn?" I said to my friend who had obviously thought I had turned traitor.

"That was... easier than expected..." he said although I knew he was thinking 'that was lucky.' A prison zoomer came and picked them up and that was all I saw of them.

The next day we planned to take out the hideout but first we walked back to the barracks, Torn had decided to join me after my bike was destroyed. After Ashelin had destroyed the camera in the showers, everyone used them for as long as they could before they put another one in. Finally I returned to the bedroom and it all seemed a bit of a downer. We'd knocked out the criminals in a few minutes then they were taken away and we went to bed. I could only hope that tomorrow would prove interesting.


	5. Oh Right, THAT's Why I Hate the KG

When I woke up the next morning it was dark and my alarm was beeping right in my ear.

I immediately knew something was wrong. We never get woken up before six in the morning when we're on day shift and it couldn't be after three am.

As if on a cue from my thoughts, Torn walked in looking slightly uneasy.

"What's wrong?" I asked guardedly.

Torn looked at me for a second, as if weighing up whether he should tell me, "Nothing much, apparently they found some other little Underground base and they want my 'best people' to take it out."

I sighed and pulled on my armour. It fell into place with almost alarming comfort as I picked up my gun and joined Torn as we walked towards the hangar. It reminded me how much I had changed. The tattoos and the armour were superficial things, but the ease with which I cloaked myself in the clothes I had once hated scared me. A lot.

The hangar was deserted, three hours before the shift change and getting two hover bikes was easy. A few others joined us but I barely noticed their presence as I tried to pick apart what Torn had said.

When we reached the water slums I thought I had the full horror of what Torn had known. I might have to kill one of my extended family. Someone I had lived with my whole life in the comfort of the water slums, being lulled to sleep by the sound of the water gently splashing against the houses.

I reached the house that we had been told housed Underground rebels and it seemed familiar to me. Two guards slammed open the door and barged in to the house and I began to yell, "Krimzon Gua-" as I realised why it was familiar.

It was my house.

I had lived in it since birth and yet it seemed like just a hint of a far off memory.

I felt my legs buckle and my resolve break as I fell to the ground. I could only watch as the guards killed everything I had known since I could remember. Torn's arm was around me but I could barely feel it because of the numbing terror gripping my body.

Torn was yelling into his headset but all I heard was Errol's slippery reply. "I'm sure it is the correct house, _commander_, I was the one who organised the attack."

Torn's reply was drowned out by the sound of gunfire but I could here his cries of, "STOP!" before finally I heard three gunshots as Torn shot the guards in the doorway.

That was the last thing I saw before I finally succumbed to the pain and loss and blacked out entirely.


	6. The Beginning of an End

I woke up for the second time on that day and it seemed darker than it had been when I woke up earlier. I could see Torn asleep in a chair in the corner of the room with bags under his eyes and dusty footsteps on the ground suggested he had been pacing for quite some time before he slept. The bed I was on was rusty and I just had a blanket covering me and someone had hung the armour on the wall.

"How's it going?" a chirpy voice asked.

I almost jumped out of my skin as I saw the barmaid's, Tess, face in front of me, "Where am I? What happened?" I asked as it came flooding back. The three am wake up call, the mission and Torn as he killed his colleagues.

"Don't worry, you're safe now. This is an old library," Tess said, indicating the book shelves near the solid steel door, "Torn knew about it and took you here."

"Then why are you here?" I asked groggily, still coming to terms with what had happened and had probably happened to dozens of other families that I was lucky enough not to have seen.

"I'm in the Underground," Tess said freely, as though this was nothing more than a passing comment, "Torn guessed and told us we could have here as a hideout if we helped him kill Errol and Praxis."

I decided to just leave the conversation lie festering after those words when Torn rolled over and groaned before standing up.

"Kyra!" he smiled, but it was half-hearted and showed none of the sarcastic smirk it had once been. He looked like a mess with his hair all over the place, the order it once had was completely lost after his day sleeping on the chair. His communicator lay smouldering in the fire that lit up the eastern part of the room and his armour was nowhere to be seen.

"Well, we better get you two into something a little less… noticeable," said Tess happily as she walked towards the door. Torn's face suggested he would rather die than be seen shopping with two girls but his sensible side eventually won over and we pulled him out the door.

The bazaar was fairly empty but it seemed too full without the rest of my family and Tess' perkiness seemed distant and painful.

We were almost near a clothing store when a Krimzon Guard stopped in front of us. I reached for a gun that wasn't there and took a step back to run when Ashelin's voice hissed from through the exhaust smoke of the Hellcat she had been driving, "Don't make a scene, I'm trying to help you!" I decided to trust her, since she was still armed and I wasn't, "Take this," she said before passing me a tub of skin coloured cream, "It will cover up the tattoos for a while but it's easy to wipe off so be careful. I wish I could go with you, but I can't," Ashelin said as she started to climb back into the cruiser, "If you need help though, don't forget to ask," and with those words, she disappeared into the cloudy sky.

I looked quizzically at Torn, but he just shrugged and wiped the cream on his face. Ashelin was right, it did cover the tattoos perfectly but Torn didn't seem… right without them.

I saw my face in a mirror as we kept walking and thought I looked different. I tried to convince myself that it was just the hair; it would grow out in a couple of months and I would be back to normal.

I couldn't do it.

I was different in too many ways. There was hardness to my features that suggested permanent anger or depression. The tattoos that I had grown so comfortable with had gone, at least for a little while, and my shoulders drooped the tiniest bit, but to me even that centimetre was a mile.

The sight of the clothes stores in the bazaar didn't brighten my mood. I had always come here to sell materials before going home…

Torn didn't look any happier than I was, but Tess' exuberance took the edge off some of my sadness.

At least the shopping trip yielded some results. Torn kept the jumpsuit-thing that was what we wore under the yellow, elite armour and his boots but with the little metal horns pulled off and the metal pulled off the leg cover. He kept the belts without the armour and went back to the red sash so he didn't have to buy anything new because I already had the red sash as a scarf. The only new addition was a plated arm guard.

My change was much more obvious. I had completely done away with anything related to the Krimzon Guard.

Instead, I had shorts with a toothed belt and plated ankle-high boots. I kept the ear armour but had my hair cut so that it was chin-length and looked nothing like the strands popular in the KG. Finally, I had upper chest armour made out of some of the Metal Head hide plates I used to sell in the bazaar, along with a short, upper torso jacket that had plenty of pockets as well as another, new, blue scarf that didn't look like a KG sash.

When I finally felt like the KG days were behind me, we left the bazaar to meet the old man known only as "The Shadow" and truly join the Underground movement.

At least that was something I could look forward to, killing Errol once and for all.

Before we made it out of the bazaar, I noticed something interesting; a heavily armoured man slowly walking towards the port with a large, bulging bag. I ran and caught up with him before he reached a hover bike and he turned around, surprisingly kindly for a guy with a missing eye and a huge build.

"What do you want?" he asked, once again surprising me with his joviality.

"I was wondering if you might have some weapons… going spare," one thing you learnt fairly quickly was how to spot a wasteland weapon smuggler, "My friend and I are in a bit of a… predicament with the KG."

The man looked around quickly before replying, "I don't have any guns, I'm 'supplying the new kitchen at a tavern,'" he added the quotation marks with his fingers, "but I suppose I could spare a few old swords for two renegades such as yourselves…" he hummed and drummed his fingers on his armour before coming to a decision.

"If you ever need help, go to the Hog's Head Saloon, ask for Sig," he said as he tossed two swords and drove off towards the port.

I didn't know what had changed, but the knife made me feel somehow more hopeful that I could get things under control and it seemed as though there was a glimmer of sunshine through the clouds.


	7. Why Did I Agree To This?

The sun glistened over the rooves of Haven City as I jumped from rooftop to rooftop on my way to my new underground assignment. The port was filled with people basking in the sunlight because in 'Haven' the sunshine never lasted. Small children swam lazily in the water and the rim of concrete was inhabited by hundreds of sunshine revellers.

Torn had decided that as more of our operations became more and more difficult with swarms of guards and turrets inhabiting every target we needed to hit the Baron where he wasn't expecting it, in broad daylight with hundreds of civilians around and while Krimzon Guards wore bright red uniforms and had no respect for civilians, the underground looked and acted just like common civilians. I didn't want to admit it to Torn but I was nervous, even if the operation were at night under the cover of darkness, I would have been worried.

More of our targets were too heavily guarded or had been rerouted to avoid us but most recently it had been an easy job that had put me off. There had only been three guards at the door of one KG operations office and one of them carried a microchip. The door hadn't reacted well to the explosives and the noises attracted KG officers so most of the mission had been abandoned and yet miraculously a mere door guard had a chip with KG operations details.

One of them had been about my family's murder before I left the guard. The reason for their… execution had been: 'The family are known to be in possession of illegal items from beyond the city walls.' Not only did it blame me for their death but someone had planted it right where they knew we were going to attack.

My reverie was broken as I was joined by the rest of the squad for this particular mission. We were planning on destroying a depot in the red zone which was fairly well guarded so there were eight people on the team: a newbie known as Mack who was only about seventeen, Reg a heavily scarred and bullet-ridden veteran and some of the interchangeable underground fighters who all seemed to wear green and a red scarf.

We assembled in a circle around a sketchy blueprint of the target, causing me to feel the heat as team leader.

"Okay, so does everybody get the plan?" I started uneasily as a few grunts ranging from excited from Mack to bored from everyone else satisfied me, "So just in case we'll go over it one more time. We go between these to rooftops here. Then we grab this pipeline running along the connecting wall to swing onto the depot roof here. If we land on the grill of the air duct it shouldn't set off any alarms as the alarms are on the hinges and the rim. Next we blow the roof here so we'll drop onto the guard with the alarm in his office here and then pack the hall with explosives and tripwires so that when the guards come, they go boom and we run away and have our happily ever afters… or at least being still alive tonight unlike the guards," I finished as I noticed everyone was getting finicky.

Everyone nodded but before they began to move I blurted an idea that had been growing in my head, "Wait a few hours, I get the feeling they're expecting us to attack now.

The rest of the squad looked at me as if I was insane but Torn trusted me so they just gave me death stares for two hours until I finally gave the order to move.

The rooftops were fairly quiet, filtering out most of the street noise but also filtering out most of ours. We were only ten metres from the pipeline when there was an unmistakable noise of a laser turret. The terrible activation time meant that most of us were past except Reg. Although it wasn't as bad as my family's shooting I still felt the tearing pain of being able to do nothing as he was ripped apart by tiny bullets.

Mack was shivering in fear but the rest of us knew we had to move onward, the turret was blindsided for now but returning would put us right in its crosshair.

I ran forward but as I prepared to jump for the pipe I realised the entire area in front of us was covered in turrets, preventing entry from any direction, or any exit from us.

The squad was about to go for the best when I realised a falling object in the middle could attract every turret's fire. As I began to take a run up, Mack realised what I was going to do but he couldn't stop me.

As every turret aimed, they all scarpered and I was glad that I had saved all of their lives.

Then the bullets hit.

Everything felt so cold…

My arms and legs couldn't move…

My vision blurred as I coughed up blood and the mist reached my eyes…

A figure approached me that I couldn't recognise…

Even the voice seemed a million miles away, a memory on the edge of my fluttering thoughts, "Remember me…"

"…Kyra?" and suddenly I recognised the voice…

Errol.


	8. The Beginning of Everything Else

I never thought my eyes would open again, but when they did I almost wished they hadn't.

The first thing I saw was Errol's insane eyes. He smiled but it was a terrifying sight. His teeth pointed like fangs and he seemed maniacal.

"Welcome back, Kyra," Errol said sarcastically, "Do you like my little project?" He spread his arms and the bench I was shackled to bent up like a chair. It caused my chest agony and I realised that it was covered in bullet holes that had been replaced with tubes, pumping something purple underneath my skin. The room I was held in was enormous, with cells all around the walls which were as of yet unfilled. The bench I was chained to was on a platform in the middle of an abyss, breaking the chains would quite probably send me over the edge.

"I got a little promotion recently," Errol gloated, "Commander of the Krimzon Guard. You wouldn't care to reveal the position of the old one would you?" he asked 'politely.' I shook my head angrily as Errol continued, "I thought not. That's why I have _this_," he pressed a button and the purple stuff began to flow through the tubes, causing me to writhe in immense pain, "Still no?" I gritted my teeth and still shook my head.

"Oh well," Errol said, pressing the button to leave the tube pumping and me in agony.

I couldn't sleep and the agony never subsided. Errol and I had many more meetings like the first one until I passed out from exhaustion and pain but then six hours later I would find myself awake again.

Finally, one day it stopped and I found Errol smiling again with the Baron congratulating him on his work.

I could feel something wrong, a deep power resonating within me but it was evil. Errol began appraising me and I could see the glee in his eyes as he examined me. I could see the faces of my family, Mack, Reg and all of the Krimzon Guards who had just been following orders as I watched Errol.

The most all-consuming fury I had ever felt rose up from inside me and I could feel a much greater strength than ever before as purple lightning flashed momentarily. The shackles broke as I lunged for Errol but he merely shook his head as he muttered, "Such a shame…"

The lightning flashed outwards but I felt overwhelmed as I coughed up blood. The blood soon became stained with purple splotches. I could no longer move or control the dark power.

Errol said, "Thanks for your assistance," and pushed me into the abyss.

As I fell and the ground came closing in I could only think one thing…

I… helped Errol?

**The Happy Ending **

A few years later and hundreds of years before, an old sage was holding his baby daughter. The mother had died in childbirth and he had never been good with names. He thought for a while about all of the females he'd met until he remembered one in particular.

She had been one of the most useful underground members and then one day she had run an attack on a depot. She had dived into a bullet storm to save six people and had been torn to pieces while everyone else survived.

What was her name again? Kyra.

But that didn't quite fit…

Finally the sage came to a decision as he whispered the name.

"Keira."


End file.
